Achieving sustainable development resilience: Poverty reduction through affordable access to electricity in developing economies

Abstract

Energy is indispensable to bringing off the growing human demand, and it is a challenging global issue to achieve sustainable development goals by using clean energy. The present study evaluates whether access to electricity helps decline poverty in developing countries. For this purpose, the impact of access to electricity on the total population, rural and urban populations on poverty have been analyzed from 1990 to 2020 in 82 developing countries. Empirical results are obtained through the non-linear Panel ARDL approach. The results show that rural and urban population's access to electricity to the total population proposes the inverted U-shaped relationship with poverty. As a result, increased access to electricity initially contributes to poverty but eventually causes it to reduce. Based on these findings, the study suggests that in order to combat poverty, the countries with poor access to electricity should grant everyone easy and affordable access to power.